


Beyond the Cradle

by manic_intent



Category: Man of Steel (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Noir, Although since Dru-Zod isn't a General in this 'verse, Case Fic, End of the World Case Fic, Krypton has gone to hell, M/M, That Sci-Fi Noir AU where Dru-Zod is a detective and Jor-El is the beautiful client
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 12:03:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dru-Zod wouldn't be able to explain why he kept coming to work every morning even if he was asked. Wouldn't be able to explain why he kept sitting in an empty office in an increasingly empty workblock, looking out through his mid-Strata-1 window at the squat grindr plants blocks beyond, their oily gray silos the final resting place of the dead, recycled for fuel. It's been two cycles since Zero Day, and Krypton still needs all the energy it could get to finish carving out its own grave-marker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Cradle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Saucery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/gifts).



> I didn't expect to struggle with this prompt lol. Noir and detective stories are some of my favourite stories (read especially Jonathan Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music!). I guess what kept the first two attempts at this prompt from being publishable was not so much the POV or the plot idea but a failure at considering one of the tenets of worldbuilding - if a key character is fundamentally changed, how does this affect the world, etc. 
> 
> Michael Shannon notes that General Zod is a legendary warrior, the guardian of an entire civilisation - what if he was, as the prompt asked, just a PI/police? 
> 
> This is in sort of the same 'verse as Fundamental Principles, so: cycle = year. But you won't have to read that fic first to read this one.
> 
> The prompt from Saucery went: Noir AU: General Zod is the tough-talking detective and Jor-El is his beautiful and wealthy client. Ahahaha. Hopefully this fic still fulfils the spirit of the prompt... XD;;

zero day.

The M'JJati came from beyond even the deep black beyond the stars, world-eaters: they washed into the Kryp nebula like a tide, swallowing life in their wake. Some blamed fusion cycles in dark matter, others, more pragmatic, pointed to the fall of the Green Lantern Corps. The universe had become a colder and lawless place, ripe for its shadows to grow longer in the rippling wake of its fallen guardians.

Krypton was a world that had not been without its defences - or warning systems. As its planetary colonies began to grow dark, one by one, Krypton readied its fleets, its armies, its greatest generals and scientists. The most advanced and creative technology on this quadrant of the universe was nothing without an equally advanced and creative grasp of strategy, however, and just like its colonies, Krypton began to grow dark-

I.

Dru-Zod wouldn't be able to explain why he kept coming to work every morning even if he was asked. Wouldn't be able to explain why he kept sitting in an empty office in an increasingly empty workblock, looking out through his mid-Strata-1 window at the squat grindr plants blocks beyond, their oily gray silos the final resting place of the dead, recycled for fuel. It's been two cycles since Zero Day, and Krypton still needs all the energy it could get to finish carving out its own grave-marker.

Maybe he's as bloody-minded as Faora-Ul says. So what. The world's going to hell. If he has to watch while it burns, he'll do it with the burn of nicotine in his lungs and a bottle of whisky in one hand, his blaster in the other. He's sentimental that way. 

The infogrid's out today, which isn't unusual of late. Dru-Zod's still thumbing desultorily at the dead screen when a step rasps lightly in the corridor outside. He straightens, eyes narrowing, his palm dropping to the blaster holster at his hip as he noiselessly slides the infogrid slate back onto his desk. With the tightening grip on energy creds in place, looting's become a commonplace affair: desperate Kryptonians picking dead meat off the corpse of their own cities. His lip curls, and he turns to watch the door, his feet flat on the arracrete ground. He'll welcome a looter. It'll be something to break up the monotony. 

Someone stops outside his door, footsteps scuffing, then he's paged through the door comm. "Ah." A male voice. There's a pause, then, "Inspector?"

Dru-Zod frowns, very slightly, and thumbs at his infogrid, but the external sec-feed has been down for months, and the screen stays blank. Ah, what the hell. "Who are you and what do you want?" 

"My name is Jor-El," the intruder begins, and Dru-Zod straightens up sharply in his chair. "I felt perhaps that we could discuss business?"

Dru-Zod hesitates. On one hand, if this is a looter, it's a particularly creative and ballsy variant of the species, and he's curious. On the other hand, if it's not a looter but actually Jor-El, once Head of the Kryptonian Science Council and now, by default, part of the Exiled High Council… well. He's still curious. He touches the release panel under his desk, and the doors open.

Jor-El is handsome the way only the carefully bio-engineered Pure-Line House scions can be handsome, and he walks with a grace and confidence that his current status doesn't quite deserve, but then again, Dru-Zod isn't entirely sure what that might be. Jor-El was once part of the doomed and expensively futile Defence Initiative, and like the rest of DI, was blamed for Krypton's fall. Most of High Command, as far as Dru-Zod had heard, had either killed themselves, been executed, or accepted exile, but as Krypton's foremost scientist, Jor-El had sat in a grey area.

"I thought that you were under arrest," Dru-Zod states bluntly, looking Jor-El pointedly up and down. 

It's an insolence that would have been unthinkable just a few cycles ago, but if there's one thing that Zero Day has been good for, it's been how quickly it had levelled a millennia of social strata. Jor-El is unarmed, and instead of his robes of office, he wears a simple tunic, jacket and breeches, indistinguishable from the usual rough garments of the Houseless other than the black gloves that he wears under his sleeves. He looks young, in the prime of his life, but Dru-Zod knows that Jor-El is at least forty to fifty cycles old. He scowls. Dru-Zod himself has just cleared forty cycles, and age has cut severity into his face, but he welcomes it. 

"I am under watch," Jor-El shrugs, unconcerned, and he even smiles gently. Dru-Zod curls his lip into a sneer, unimpressed.

"What do you want?"

"I've heard that you are very good at finding things that have gone missing." 

"Are you even in a position to pay me?"

"Inconvenienced as I am now, I am not without my resources."

Dru-Zod scowls. It's just like a Pure-Liner to call being under permanent house arrest for high treason 'inconvenienced'. "Why should I help a traitor?"

The first crack appears in Jor-El's gentle facade. "What I do, I do for the good of Krypton. The failure of the Initiative had nothing to do with the Science Council. And what I ask you to do now would also-"

"The world's ending," Dru-Zod jerks a thumb at the window. "What do you need from it that's so important?"

"Our energy sources have been bottlenecked, but we've been able to carry on with our… plans," Jor-El explains. "Unfortunately, a key aspect of it was stolen from me yesterday afternoon, and neither my jailers nor my contacts have so far been able to discern the culprit, let alone its current location." 

"And how do I know that you're not making some sort of treasonous device?"

Jor-El actually smiles. "Inspector, I trust that you will be able to discern the nature of that to your satisfaction."

"I haven't been an Inspector for a while," Dru-Zod snaps, and regrets his temper the moment the words leave his mouth. Jor-El, however, only bows his head slightly.

"My apologies. Of course."

"I'll see if I can fit you into my schedule," Dru-Zod notes, as insultingly as he can, but Jor-El smiles with happy relief as though oblivious to Dru-Zod's sarcasm. 

"Thank you, ser! Unfortunately due to the infogrid problems I'm unable to forward the specs to your slate, but I have the dimensions and description of the object on tesseglyph at my estates. Please call on me whenever you like." 

Jor-El bows again, more deeply, then he leaves with the same grace and dignity with which he game, and Dru-Zod glares at his retreating back. Traitors, he thinks, have no right to hold their heads so high, when their very footsteps insult the living.

II.

He'll call it curiosity later, but Dru-Zod's still in a foul mood as he makes the trip from his workblock to the House El estates. Jor-El does still have resources, strangely enough - Dru-Zod hadn't thought it possible that anyone on Krypton still could commandeer private jumpships.

He's seen the El estates before, in passing, when he had still been in the police corps, though he's never had any reason to pay it a visit. Crimes that occur at that level of society aren't usually handled by the police corps, after all. The structure he lands on is still the same, but the rest of the El estates have been fundamentally changed. Black, slim panels line every sunward surface, an odd throwback to ancient energy tech, and the reception chamber beyond the launch strip is bristling with activity.

There's no security that Dru-Zod can see: as far as he can tell, the Kryptonians hurrying past and around him are all retainers of some sort, judging by their plain clothing. Jor-El picks his way through the crowd to him, his smile warm and annoyingly puppyish, and Dru-Zod grits his teeth.

"I didn't realize that you were still allowed servants," he growls, as Jor-El leads him out of the reception chamber.

Jor-El shoots him a look of surprise for a moment, then he chuckles. "Ah, these? They are not retainers. These are my assistants."

Dru-Zod can't quite see the difference, and Jor-El explains, with another glance at his expression, "From the Resistance."

The Resistance. Dru-Zod snorts, and he gets a dirty look from a pair of passing Kryptonians, boys too young for a brutal and losing war. "What are you making?" Dru-Zod asks grudgingly, as they step out of the crowds and into a set of side-corridors, narrower and weaving through once-elegant rooms that look as though they have been stripped of their usual ornaments and artifice, packed full now of assistants and machinery of which nature Dru-Zod cannot divine. 

"Everything," Jor-El smiles, gently. "Replicators. Jumpships, spacer suits, propulsion packs, antigrav fields… everything." The smile fades, and Jor-El exhales, slowly. "Or… we were, until the theft. Now we're on auxiliary energy stores, and they won't last the week, not even on minimal production." 

"So the end of the world comes in a week rather than in a few more painful cycles."

Jor-El narrows his eyes slightly, but his shoulders remain relaxed. "I am rather more optimistic than that, ser. This way."

"We're going to your tesseglyph array?"

"I felt that it might be more instructive to show you the… scene of the crime."

They're three storeys down, taking ancient stairs that had likely never seen such intense usage since the invention of jaunt lifts, but Dru-Zod supposes that the jaunt lifts, like most jaunt-capable buildings over Krypton, have been powered down to conserve energy. This entire floor is a chamber, Dru-Zod realizes, as he steps out onto the landing, if fairly recently and brutally converted - gouges remain chipped and cracked over once-flawless ysper walls, their shifting splendour dulled under the cabling and struts bolted to every surface.

A vast, spherical machine squats in the centre of the room, connected by gigantic silver funnels, glass cylinders taller than Dru-Zod half-empty with viscous blue fluids, cables snaking out to a vast array of silos and consoles and arrays, some larger than Dru-Zod's office. The whole, gigantic construction is connected by precarious catwalks and walkways, and Dru-Zod feels disconcerted as he follows Jor-El towards the machine, through the humming background drone of its nest. 

A familiar figure straightens up from beside the sphere as they approach, and Dru-Zod frowns as he recognises her: Faora-Ul looks unchanged, down to her police corp persteel and her plasma rifle, worn slung across her back. She stares right back at him, then her glance switches over to Jor-El. 

"We don't need him," she says curtly.

"It's nice to see you too," Dru-Zod drawls. "Sergeant."

Faora-Ul glares at him. Prior to Zero Day, they'd enjoyed an antagonistic but workable professional relationship with a higher than average solve rate. After Zero Day and the Convergence Wars, there hadn't seemed to be much of a point keeping up with the remnants of his former life. 

"Think of it as having more eyes on the problem," Jor-El says gently, and surprisingly enough, Faora-Ul's hackles go down.

"Fine. I'll brief him on the problem." She waits, but Jor-El doesn't move, and Faora-Ul prompts, "So you don't have to be here." 

"Oh!" Jor-El blinks, then a touch of colour rides over his cheeks, and he ducks his gaze over to the consoles. "I felt that-"

"We'll behave ourselves," Dru-Zod says dryly, "No one is going to die."

"I, ah," Jor-El looks briefly indecisive, his eyes flicking up to Dru-Zod's, then he nods and turns away, recovering his usual grace after a few steps. 

It's an odd contrast from before, and Dru-Zod eyes Faora-Ul questioningly, but she's already glancing back at the machine, her hands flickering at the console pad set against its dull storm-gray flank. After a few seconds, a panel extrudes, and a glass cylinder slides out with a pneumatic hiss. It's empty, though the metal fingers within it look as though they used to be connected to something slender. 

"Two klicks ago, at around six hundred hours, the synchronous core was stolen from this," Faora-Ul raps her knuckles against the machine with a solid tapping ring, "A perpetual motion engine."

Dru-Zod blinks. "That's a fleur's dream-"

Faora-Ul exhales irritably. "This is why I didn't want you on the case. I don't have the time to ease you into shit."

He grins at her, baring all his teeth. "I missed you too."

"Maybe you can get all the denial out of your system while we're on the go." Faora-Ul glares. "I think I know who took the core and where it's gone. I don't know why Jor-El called you in, but since you're here, you can back me up. I assume you still know how to shoot a blaster?"

"Fill me in on the case while we're on the way," Dru-Zod decides, annoyed at her tone, but he stifles his exasperation with some effort. Technically, even by pre-Zero Day standards, this is Faora-Ul's walk, as the first officer on scene. He's surprised that he still takes some comfort from defunct procedure. Old habits die hard after all, even - or especially - at the end of the world.

III.

Faora-Ul's first three leads are duds, and one even ended in an armed scuffle, and Dru-Zod's tired and irritable by the time they get back to the El estates. He finds that he's been allocated a room, and he's too weary to protest the presumption. Faora-Ul disappears instead of settling down in the communal cantina to have a bite to eat, and Dru-Zod doesn't blame her. The base protein cubes that the replicators churn out aren't particularly tasty. Not even House El can afford to waste resources on sourcing proper food, not when the M'JJati have burned all the primary production plants south of the Dreaming City.

Rather to his surprise, Jor-El settles down opposite him on the cantina table with a plate of his own and another one of his annoyingly gentle smiles. He acts like a master of his estate rather than a prisoner, and Dru-Zod wonders what the fuck the Resistance has been up to. He hasn't kept in touch over the last few months with his contacts, but _still_ -

"I apologize for the food-"

"Save it," Dru-Zod cuts in curtly. "It's the same the world over. What's left of it."

Jor-El sighs, and actually looks a little hurt at his tone. "I'm not sure what I have done to offend you."

"You haven't offended me _personally_."

"Then?"

"I seem to remember a congressional hearing and a certain verdict."

Jor-El's already shaking his head, as though about to gently reproach a child. "And I accept it, of course. I won't make excuses for my failure. I tried to help our people to the best of my ability and it wasn't enough - I accept that there are consequences. And I am still trying," he adds. The rebuke in his tone is almost imperceptible, but it's there.

"You're giving all these Kryptonians false hope." 

"Maybe so. But it is still hope." Jor-El counters, and there's steel in his tone now - Dru-Zod grits his teeth. "If the end comes, it will come, but I will not go quietly into the dark."

Dru-Zod chews on a protein cube. He can't explain his bitterness. Jor-El wasn't there when Dru-Zod was in the volunteer corps with his men, all used to nothing more violent than the occasional domestic or robbery or disturbance down Strata-0. Pulse weapons had done little to slow the advancing tide of the M'JJati, often translucent and gelatinous when manifest and a deadly mist when non-incorporated, the faceless horror of contingent after contingent swallowed by a sentient hive-minded entity capable of any shape, any form, Gods, the _stink_ of it-

He swallows the cube, his appetite fading. He recalls the futile attempt to save the Genesis chambers over at Solton, the creches in Developmental. The children were the worst, screaming silent and helpless in the folds of the alien enemy as they were slowly consumed in its tide. Traditional tactics and strategy had not held firm against an enemy that knew no fear nor pain.

"I was in Solton," Dru-Zod says finally, and Jor-El bows his head with a pained grimace. "I lost a lot of men. Most of the police corps of Solton. Over a quarter of the Dreaming City's. We joined the volunteer corps, you see." 

"I remember."

"Your tech did nothing for us then." Dru-Zod eats another cube, forcing it down. "I doubt that it will do anything for us now. War's over, Jor-El. We lost." 

"I agree. We've already lost Krypton." Jor-El pokes at his plate. He doesn't remove his gloves, Dru-Zod notes. It doesn't seem to be vanity. An injury, perhaps? "Even if we drive out the enemy, somehow, too much damage has been done to our planet. The M'JJati eat all energy, not just life energy. They strip planets of everything, turn them into lifeless asteroids. We've learned that much from our colonies."

"So why would you…" Dru-Zod trails off, recalling Jor-El's earlier words, in the chamber of the machine. "You're evacuating the planet," he says finally. " _Space suits_ and antigrav fields. You're leaving."

"We're _all_ leaving," Jor-El corrects, with a faint smile. "Anyone who's willing to go. That includes you, Inspector, I hope."

"That's _insane_. You'll never convince the… do we even have the energy left for atmos launch, even if we had the ships?"

"We have the ships." Jor-El disagrees. "And we have the means to bypass the need for fuel-intensive atmos launches. My Phantom Drive tech," he explains, when Dru-Zod shoots him a look of patent disbelief. "We've already funnelled most of our remaining fleet into the Phantom Zone. Recovered all our prison ships for refitting. It'll be a bit of a squeeze, but I'm confident that we'll have the resources to survive for at least a cycle. Enough to find and terraform another homeworld."

"That's a hell of a long shot."

"Better than extinction. Skip drones have spent the last two cycles looking for habitable planets. We can jump from the Phantom Zone to anywhere in this quadrant of the universe due to slipspace funnels. And more importantly," Jor-El continues, when Dru-Zod opens his mouth again, "The M'JJati are dual-dimensional beings, they can only exist in Astral and Prime space. They can't follow us out to the Phantom Zone." 

Removing any risk that any of the refugees are Ridden - mindless Kryptonians infected and controlled by Astral-form M'JJati. Dru-Zod suppresses a shudder. He's seen his share of horrors on Zero Day. "I haven't heard about this." 

"Nor would you. The Resistance hasn't made a public shift yet from resistance to evacuation. The process has to be in an orderly manner. Public panic will only exacerbate the problem." Jor-El gestures absently at the cantina around them. "But we need that reactor to come back online. The Phantom Gates need a lot of core energy to activate." 

"I have a few ideas of my own," Dru-Zod concedes grudgingly, because old habits die hard. "Due to the painful lack of internal security in your estates the pool of suspects runs into the hundreds. I think we can narrow it down. It takes a very particular sort of knowledge to know which part of your machine is essential _and_ can be removed."

"So Faora-Ul has told me. I've given her a list."

"She gave me a copy. She's always been good at procedure," Dru-Zod shrugs. "But she doesn't usually start at the right place. The starting point of the investigation of any theft is to consider motive as well as opportunity. She looks at opportunity and tends to make assumptions about motives." 

"Then I am glad that you are on the case." Jor-El's smile is warm, like the touch of his fingertips as he reaches over to press his right hand against Dru-Zod's wrist, and he almost jerks his hand away. He doesn't know why he hesitates. There's something uncomfortably contagious about Jor-El's encompassing optimism: for the first time in two cycles, when Dru-Zod looks forward into the future, he doesn't see only the dark.

IV.

Police procedure hasn't changed, even in the face of the end of the world: Dru-Zod settles down to watch sec-feeds. There's a point of corruption over the entrance to the perpetual machine chamber during the incident, of course, but there are hundreds of sec-feeds spotted around the El estates. It takes an entire klick, but he eventually finds what he's looking for.

"The perpetual motion engine is never powered down," Dru-Zod begins, once Faora-Ul arrives in the machine chamber, looking surly. Jor-El's right behind her, and Dru-Zod feels oddly self-conscious for a moment before he brings up the screens that he had been examining. "So the moment that the core is removed, it'll be obvious, and the estates have automatic containment procedures." 

"Yes," Faora-Ul scowls. "We knew this."

"Jor-El, how many people on Krypton know how to manufacture the core? Or the perpetual engine?"

"Well," Jor-El looks briefly thrown. "I would say that other than us-"

"You've published your blueprints for the perpetual motion engine, haven't you?"

"Of course. I routinely publish my work. Science isn't meant to be kept secret. But it's not just a question of having the knowledge, you need the means, as well, and-" 

"And the core, according to your notes, is the most difficult element to manufacture accurately." 

Jor-El nods. "Yes, the precise elements required need to be fused with extreme delicacy. We have a storage room full of prototypes and failures." 

"We've looked at these leads, Dru-Zod," Faora-Ul narrows her eyes. "We've examined Infra-tek and the Military Guild-"

"Only circumstantially. What bothered me about this case is that although there are sec-feeds littered throughout the El estates, there was only distortion at the point of entry to the chamber. If the thief had jammer tech, he should have jammed all the feeds on the way in and out. Instead, it looks like he appeared out of nowhere, stole the core, and disappeared." 

"But the theft had to have happened at that point," Faora-Ul says insistently. "The machine powered down."

"The machine has auxiliary core panels. Which aren't used, normally, because the main core is enough to power the machine, but they work, don't they?" Dru-Zod looks pointedly over at Jor-El, who gets the hint - he steps over to the machine, typing into the console.

After a moment, three other hatches lower down along its silvery flank open, and cylinders slide out. Two are empty, but the third contains a twisted, blackened pod.

It's nice to be right. 

"This is one of ours," Jor-El pulls on gloves before removing the pod from the cylinder. "One of the final prototypes. But it only would have been stable for two hours…" Jor-El trails off.

"What happens at approximately four hundred hours, Faora-Ul?" 

"Routine maintenance," Faora-Ul supplies, her eyes narrowed. "But we examined the sec-feed."

"If you had examined the sec-feed from the klick before _as well_ , you'll have noticed that it was an exact copy. No one cleans the same room exactly the same way twice." Dru-Zod retorts. "The thief is in the maintenance crew. He grabs one of the prototypes on his way up, puts in the auxiliary core, grabs the main core, and has a two hour window before the machine powers down and the alarm is raised. More than enough time to get the hell out." 

Faora-Ul grunts. "All right. So that's how it's done. But where is it?"

"It narrows down our suspects. I don't think one of the Ridden would have gone to so much trouble," Dru-Zod lowers his voice. "The M'JJati aren't really much into subtle forward planning." 

Faora-Ul relaxes imperceptibly, and even Jor-El nods, relief on his expression. No one wants to deal with the possibility of a perimeter breach. The Dreaming City's outer perimeter is still holding - barely. 

"The transport grid's still running stat streams, and my pass still works," Dru-Zod notes. "I assume that's where you got a list of our suspects from before. Anyone who got urgent jumps after the time period."

"So we look at an earlier timeframe."

"Our thief's smart enough to run sleight of hand, he won't get sloppy on the drop. Maintenance jumps aren't usually single jumps back and from the workblock, not at this time in the morning. They go from client to client. The next jump was to Internal Records." Dru-Zod brings up a holoscreen from the infogrid slate that he's holding. "Guess who else made an early morning skip to check on a datapack." 

Faora-Ul narrows her eyes as she reads the highlighted name. "Jax-Ur. Fuck."

"But he's a geneticist," Jor-El looks confused. "What would he want with the core?" 

"Geneticist or not, House Ur is one of the Pure Line houses. Like yours," Dru-Zod points out. "They have resources, even now, and as far as I can tell, they're not involved in the Resistance." 

"Does it matter?" Faora-Ul interrupts. "Let's go and shake them down." 

"House Ur will be heavily defended," Jor-El disagrees, patting his palm briefly against the silent perpetual motion engine. "We don't have the manpower to stage a siege, even if we were to risk the possibility of inciting civil war."

Faora-Ul eyes Dru-Zod, and he sighs. Oh, what the hell. "Faora-Ul and I have a few friends here and there. We'll pay Jax-Ur a visit." It'll be nice to have the team together again, at the least. Even if the mission's a little suicidal.

"I'll go too," Jor-El says doubtfully. 

"No, you stay here," Faora-Ul snaps. "You're a necessary part of Operation Exodus."

"I don't-"

"Don't make us lock you in a room somewhere," Dru-Zod threatens, and he finds that he means it. He doesn't like the idea of the gentle scientist with his annoyingly soft smile tailing along on a strike op. "Besides," he adds, when Jor-El looks as though he's going to disagree, "We need a handler. Eyes on high. Someone who can hack sec-feeds remotely and direct us. Otherwise, we'll be going in blind."

"All right," Jor-El concedes reluctantly. "Get your team together, Inspector. I'll see what I can get together in terms of gear." 

Dru-Zod looks to Faora-Ul, who nods curtly. "I know where to find Trus-Vex, and he'll know where the others are. They'll come if they know that you're going," she adds, a little sourly, though there's a curl of anticipation to her lips.

"Then I'll check the gear and do prep."

Faora-Ul nods again, then she stalks out of the chamber, heading up the stairs. Dru-Zod closes the infogrid, setting the slate on a workbench, and when he turns back to Jor-El, the scientist is staring at the empty heart of the perpetual motion engine, running his fingertips over the empty core cylinder. 

"I've never done this before. 'Handling'," Jor-El elaborates, looking uncomfortable. "Perhaps someone more experienced-"

"All we need is someone to read live sec-feeds and a map and tell us whenever we're making a wrong turn." It's more complex than that, but if this is the only way they can get Jor-El to stay put-

"I _can_ handle a rifle," Jor-El notes, though when Dru-Zod arches an eyebrow, he holds up a palm briefly. "But I will stay." His smile is warm again, fond, uncomfortably so. It's strange. They've only known each other for a klick or so, haven't they?

"Have we met before?" Dru-Zod asks bluntly, because it's never been good police procedure, in his opinion, to beat around the point, and Jor-El flushes slightly. 

"Do you think that we have?"

"I don't believe so," Dru-Zod notes, his eyes narrowed slightly, "But I meet a lot of people in my line of work, and not all of them tend to wear their faces openly at the time."

"Ah, I," Jor-El hesitates, for a long moment, then he ducks his head. "I was at Solton," he says finally. "It wasn't an authorised jump, but my team and I, in Research, we felt that we weren't doing enough, that we had failed, and if we had failed our people in the present then at least we should try to preserve our future. We suited up, wore visors, and-"

"The scientists in the Genesis chamber," Dru-Zod recalls slowly. "The crazy bastards who ignored the evac signal." 

"We did not feel that we deserved to be saved. Regardless, we felt that we had enough time to move the chamber into containment-jump and evacuate the creches. I suppose you know the rest." 

The godsdamned eggheads who had refused to leave: had to be dragged out, fighting all the way. It had cost them time, and under military procedure they would have left the scientists to their doomed endeavour, but the police Inspector within Dru-Zod had refused to turn away.

 _I remember_ , Jor-El had said. Which one of the helmeted scientists had he been? The ones whom had wept when cuffed and hauled to evac? The ones who had tried to slip away? No, Dru-Zod realizes, as he thinks it over. The one in the creche, the mad one, rigging up explosives in the corridor to try and slow down the M'JJati. The one who had been caught. Pulled down by gelatinous strands. Dru-Zod had-

"Your left hand," Dru-Zod growls, and grabs at Jor-El's wrist when Jor-El doesn't move. 

The 'flesh' under the glove is unyielding, although the flex of Jor-El's fingers look natural enough. He feels up past the wrist, nearly to the elbow, until he can touch the edge of an amputation scar, cut through by a swing of a lasblade. He remembers the smell of it, the scream from the scientist - from _Jor-El_ \- loud even through the fully visored helm, the blood. Carrying the body through the lifeblock. The interminable ride back to medbay, talking steadily to the delirious scientist to keep him from going further into shock.

"You saved my life," Jor-El pulls his hand away, gently. "I have tried to live up to the sentiment."

"We shouldn't have concentrated our forces on a doomed objective." He wasn't military: he knew nothing of politics, only of the motto of the corps - to protect, to serve. They couldn't look past the needs of the few. 

"Perhaps. Still. I am grateful." There's an earnestness to Jor-El's tone, something unreadable in his eyes, and Dru-Zod glances away with some effort.

"If this insane evac idea of yours works, I'll count that fair payment," he says gruffly.

V.

They lose Tor-An to a mob-sec turret, and it's an insane, bloody mess made worse by the fact that House Ur is obviously backed by a splinter group from the Military Guild. They're bent on making a final stand against the M'JJati, or something. Dru-Zod can't exactly relate to idiocy.

It probably would have gone badly for all of them if Jor-El hadn't proceeded to crash a jumpship through the side of the Ur estates, and in the chaos and confusion they get away, Jor-El with the core and Dru-Zod with the grim satisfaction that even though he's probably going to bleed out on the floor of an old cargo-grade jumpship, he _had_ shot Jax-Ur in the face with his blaster before he went down. The memory of that will keep him warm as he drops into the dark.

The reversal is ironic: now he's the one with his head cradled in Jor-El's lap, trying to focus on Jor-El's voice. Dru-Zod doesn't really see the point of hanging on. He's done his last beat. He's solved his last case. Soon there won't even be a Krypton. He's gone out better than most: it's a better end than he had thought that he would come to, only a few klicks ago when he had sat alone in his office and watched the grindr plants in the distance. He sleeps. 

When he wakes up again, the world as he knows it is already behind him.

VI.

The police corps' precinct in the _Eye of Rao_ reminds Dru-Zod comfortingly of Krypton, even a cycle after leaving their homeworld and three full cycles since he's last seen the inside of a real Kryptonian precinct. It's crowded, chaotic, and the sectioned-off space into offices and detective cubicles spill over into corridors and overlap. Dru-Zod chews out a pair of idiot cadets who had thought that it would be _smart_ to spend their last downtime strutting their badge around a Southside-E bar, and chases them out of his office.

Shamefaced, they don't even look up as they pass Jor-El on the way out, and Jor-El steps past, the opaque glass door sliding shut behind him. He's grinning playfully, and Dru-Zod glares at him as he slumps back into his chair, holding up a finger.

"No."

"No?" Jor-El rounds the desk anyway, trailing his fingers over the tesseglyph array. It's frozen in a replica of the crime scene over at Cantina-Two in _Aethyr's Wing_. Overcrowding leads to crime, even after the end of a world. Dru-Zod glowers at the array even as he pushes back the chair, allowing Jor-El to settle over his lap and kiss him. Jor-El's in a good mood: his hands are restless over Dru-Zod's shoulders, leather crinkling gently as they move, and Dru-Zod slides his palms up over Jor-El's thighs, chasing the heat of his flesh through the thin fabric. 

"We have something to celebrate," Jor-El murmurs, pressing closer, his gorgeous eyes smoky with want. "We've just finished terraforming New Krypton." 

"Breathable air?"

"Mm, yes."

"No unexpected alpha preds?" 

Jor-El laughs. "That was just _once_. Faora-Ul's leading a ground team to investigate, though, just in case."

"Good. I'm done with crazy enemies." Dru-Zod mouths up Jor-El's open collar, because Jor-El is a bad influence, fuck the middle of the workday and all the detectives no doubt straining their ears outside his office. "If we have to fight someone else, let's find an alien species that we don't have to skip through slipspace and blow up our home planet to get away from." 

Jor-El's wandering hands sweep briefly up over his ribs, to the old scars from the fragmentation terravir blades that had caught him in the Ur estates, and Jor-El's expression goes sober. "Let's hope not," he says quietly, and Dru-Zod sighs, tugging down Jor-El for a kiss, slow, careful, until Jor-El relaxes again and squirms. That's better. 

Dru-Zod's from a third-tier House, and that, combined with the nature of his profession, means that he's quite familiar with just about all flavors of vice known to Krypton, usually in the capacity of the arresting officer. This sin that they wear between them both, with each touch and breath, is one of the oldest known to Rao, and although not illegal per se it is still taboo, especially _here_ , in his office in the _precinct_. 

But there's no stopping Jor-El as he smiles that lazy, come hither smile of his and kisses down his neck, no pulling away as he slides down onto his knees before Dru-Zod's chair, no place to do much more than muffle his shout with his fist when he buries himself deep down Jor-El's throat on a high of ecstasy. This is sin reborn in the dark beyond the stars of their homeworld, further than the eyes of their Gods. They have come too far for sobriety or regret. 

Jor-El curls heavily against him on his chair, after, as they both catch their breaths, and his eyes are half-lidded as Dru-Zod traces the synthetic make of his artificial arm, pressing familiar fingers over the joints at the wrist and fingers, rubbing over leather. He's seen the arm without the glove, and like anything created by Jor-El, it is beautiful, but Jor-El seems self-conscious of it all - he tenses as Dru-Zod's fingers press upwards towards the amputation scar. 

"We should be able to start construction in a week, after we finish planetscans and the climate stabilises," Jor-El murmurs, his cheek pressed against Dru-Zod's shoulder. "Then another two weeks until the first biospheres are set up. After that, you'll be able to set up the first precinct on New Krypton."

Dru-Zod grunts. Until satlinks, infogrids and non-essential jumpship travel become normal, the sprawl of New Krypton is going to be a massive pain in the aether to police. But he supposes that he's looking forward to it. He's tired of living shipside, like a drifter. "Pity," he drawls, "No more chucking our criminals out of airlocks."

Jor-El stiffens, and he prods Dru-Zod when Dru-Zod smirks. The rudimentary Admiralty Council, run by the Captains of each refugee ship, from small ex-military frigate rigs to the gigantic converted max-sec prison ships, had decided on a narrow margin _not_ to allow the police to dump criminals out into deep space. People could still repeatedly fall down flights of steps, however. Dru-Zod didn't see the point of mercy. If someone was stupid enough to commit crime, now that they were part of an almost extinct species that needed to work together to survive, then that someone didn't deserve to be in the gene pool. 

"Maybe I should escalate precinct construction on the schedule." Jor-El suggests, sounding doubtful.

"I won't hold my breath." Dru-Zod tilts up his neck when Jor-El nuzzles his skin, however, and after a moment, tips Jor-El up with fingers curled in his lush hair for a slow kiss. Behind them, through the steelglass view from his office, New Krypton sits, a brown and blue globe still being moulded out of clay from an empty planet, framed against a vast cradle of stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you'll like to talk to me about ficbunnies, I'm on twitter @manic_intent :)


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